What do you do when someone asks you if you’d like to meet your favourite author?
In February 2023, Kavita Jhala, a friend and founder of Kaffeinated Konversations (KK)—the literary startup I’ve come to love—asked us something similar on the KK WhatsApp group.
My first reaction? I had to pinch myself because I was pretty sure I was dreaming.
My reaction after I realised it wasn’t a dream? Squealing with absolute joy!
Kavita told an excited bunch of us, readers, that she was bringing Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the best-selling Indian-American author, on board for a virtual meetup in the first week of March. And none of us could contain our delight.
The first time I read a book by Chitra ma’am was in school. There was an intriguing book sitting on my school’s library shelf. It was titled One Amazing Thing and as a fan of all amazing things, I felt compelled to pick it up. And what an absolute joyride reading this book was, a pleasure leafing through the disparate yet universal stories of the characters in the book, as they were thrown the challenge of surviving an earthquake, together.
From that moment on, I started keeping an eye out for her work and boy she left me hungering for more after I finished each delicious book.
So, of course, I signed up for the meet, which took place on 5th March 2023, a Sunday. And came face to face with a woman I had idolised (and still do) for a big part of my adolescence and adulthood. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni herself, in flesh and blood.
With a beatific smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye, she narrated, in her own signature style, the story of how she made the leap from writing poetry to producing her first full-fledged novel, The Mistress of Spices. The key, she admitted, was giving herself room to write her short story collection, Arranged Marriage, and preserving the imagery of poetry in her prose. A novel, she said, had to have rising action, moments of complexity, a build-up to the climax, and the final resolution. So, she wasn’t really the kind of writer who could jump straight to it from poetry. Short stories provided the necessary transition and laid the foundation of her fascination with this, now her favourite, form of writing.
When asked why most of her novels favoured a sad ending, she replied with the wisdom one glimpses so often in her narrative: “In real life, everything is mixed up. There’s happiness but along with it there are complications.” Her books never give an easy solution to the dilemmas faced by the characters because she believes that the world will not give us what we want, each time. And we need to learn to be happy with that; to find happiness and satisfaction within ourselves.
Known for her brave and unconventional portrayal of historic female characters, she also recommended readers, especially women, reevaluate our ideas of tragedy and triumph. After all, sometimes the happiness of doing right by oneself is a far greater virtue than one brought on by toeing the societal line. Not surprisingly, this is evident in the stories of at least three of her characters—Sita (The Forest of Enchantments), Draupadi (The Palace of Illusions), and Maharani Jindan Kaur (The Last Queen).
If you haven’t read these books yet, I urge you to read them. If you have, I encourage you to read them again. Because every time you do, you discover new angles to the story and new, evolving parts of yourself. That’s how powerful a force her writing is.
Her final tip to aspiring writers as we concluded the session?
Always invest time in research. Research everything thoroughly, but most importantly the characters. Because that’s who your story revolves around, theirs is the world you’re trying not just to inhabit but also share with your readers. And if you understand their world, writing about it becomes a bit easier.
So, if you were wondering what goes on inside the minds of brilliant writers, I hope this piece gave you some insights. I, for one, cannot wait to implement what I learnt and to meet her once again, hopefully, in person.
You can catch the recording of the live session here: https://youtu.be/DALgfkDcgEg
———————————-
Garima is a writer, content strategist, and marketer with a penchant for languages and travelling. She can speak (nearly) 5 languages and has travelled to over 50 cities. Her work experience ranges from diplomatic not-for-profit organizations to early-stage startups and more. She is a polymath who also hoards (and reads) books obsessively. You can read more from her on her LinkedIn and Instagram profiles.